A ton of wealth,
Kingdoms come and go.
Hatred and vicious swipes
rule today’s world,
obliterating the love,
tearing at faith –
the faith we have in ourselves.
Oceans rich in abundance,
overwhelming us,
are overwhelmed
with our filth
and disgust –
as much as we are disgusted
with humanity.
Just stop pillaging
and polluting
and take
the chance
we could leave
this planet whole

Pour my blood on thick,
slick rivers.
Lay petals on gossamer nets
of human error and folly,
pinned there for all time
on a journey stilled by reckless
acts; all wildlife captured
become ageing slaves in limbo.
We share destiny.
Is this our eternity?

For those delicate petals,
fake dew is instrumental
when forged consciousness
dripping as tongue
numbing, dumbed down thought
slides easily off the precipice
as words from a vacuous mouth
and into
our bleeding ears.
I want to scream
like it’s written here,
words carved in ice,
’til made-to-melt
tears form ravines on
mezzanine floors –
to make the rafters
swing and hit those bass strings
finely tuned with lofty notes
that only birds can pluck
between electric volts
those shocks that send shivers
and feathers
soaring through the air;
when politicians sing
like cuckoos – let’s
plug in our guitars and play.

Twisted fibrous strings
command frivolous play
at jointed limbs.
We dance and are jigged –
woefully rigged
when each jarring movement
is in turn deliberately
fraught with venomous tugs –
Each jolt brings attempted revolt,
but the puppeteer snarls –
our lifelines become gnarled,
entangled in his bitter torture.
Unravelling his capture he spins
and mocks until we are unmeshed
in shock – ’til we don’t know if we are
coming or going.
Wooden shoes clatter,
when smaller figures, who don’t matter,
play to an audience
and bleed
into the pockets of the puppeteer’s
greed.
Swift but doleful we have become,
dancing to the puppeteer’s hum.
Lifeless, hung out,
no route of escape.
We dance and we clip clop
a charade
man made, pulled
and lulled along
by a succession of tyrants
who just want
to see us wriggle
and squirm like
the moth eaten marionette –
always ruled –
once unfurled.

Keep badgering your local and central government until they get to grip on industry and look at rhe real issues afloat here. We have a right to clean air and water. They do not have a right to extortionate profit making at the expense of humanity.

Could we plunge our hands
into damaged sinews’
frayed blood vessels
and find warmth in hidden spirit?
Have a tug of war and pull out hatred,
intolerance, indifference and anger,
to find the stuff we possess
but which remains hidden – buried
with the goodness we were born with –
tucked inside our own medicine chest.
There are things there to help us heal,
bind wounds, accept and love,
even force untainted oxygen to
cancers benign at birth
but which grow steadily malignant
once fed from the mouths
of devoted kin and a world rapidly
oozing its centre.